Morning journal and courier., 1887-10-05
TALKING THROUGH WATER.
Lieut.. Fiske on the Importance and Feasibility of TelePhon1ns at Sea.
 from the Electrical World

Lieut.. Fiske on the Importance and
 Feasibility of Telephonins at Sea.
 from the Electrical World
 I hope that Professor Blake's interesting paper entitled "A Method of Telephonic Communication Between Ships at Sea" will stimulate electricians and inventors to labor in this direction, for though good deal has already been done by the learned professor and by Mir. Edison, the problem has not yet been fully solved. All the navies of the world will be compelled in self defence to adopt the first practicable system; for, strange as it may seem, there exists abso- lutely no method of signaling which the ships of fleet could use in the smoke and noise of battle; and in naval conflict that fleet would conquer which possessed, ceteris paribus, the best method of signalling But besides the navies of the world, all steam ships would gladly adopt any practicable
 means of holding communication in fog.
 Having carried on for many months 8 la-
 borious series of experiments in the direc. tion of electrical communication between
 ships, possibly my conclusions may be in-
 teresting to anyone who contemplates attack
 ing this subject, though am able to point
 out chiefly the direction in which not to work, and to tell what things it would be
 useless to attempt.
 Iexperimented first with view to signal ling by induction, using first a bar electro-
 magnet about ten feet long, whose coils were traversed by a current of somewhat more than hundred amperes, and for a receiver a pair of Bell telephones in circuit with coils of fine wire wrapped in various ways, one coil being wrapped around groove cut in the circumference ot a soft iron wheel about thirty inches in diameter. My appa- fru oo1 no11 1v 1aroor l. mansions, till at length my sending electro magnets were the iron masts of ship wrapped with heavy wire; and frally l made an electro~magnet of the ship itself, wrapping her fore and aft with electric light wire, and sending through the wire the cur rent to two Gramms dynamos coupled in multiple arc. As 6 receiver in this case l used an iron tug about one hundred and fifty feet long and twenty-five feet broad, wrapped with fine wire in circuit with two Bell tele- phones
 Though the results which obtained were encouraging, they were not sufficiently good to indicate practical value, and I concluded l to thoroughly test the plan, first tried on a small scale by Professor Bell, of using the water to complete the circuit of a generator, and to use as receiver small wire having it's terminals in the water and in circuit with two telephones. For practical use l conclu- ded that each ship must be limited to wires one hundred yards long, and therefore lim- ! ited myself to this length in experimenting For long while got very promising re
 suits with this method, simply making and
 breaking the current of the dynamos accord- | ing to code; but increased the distance the results became uncertain. While en- deavoring to overcome these difficulties the experiments of Blake and Edison became public, and few preliminary experiments l in this direction seemed to indicate to me the superiority of their methods. Further experiments with both methods will be necessary, one difficulty to be overcome with the sound method being the receiving on board by device which will not hinder the ships speed, which will not be broken off by the grounding of the ship, and which can
 be turned out so as to receive vibrations from all directions, even such as are not expected. With the electrical system piece of tin wound with insulated wire suf6ces.
 It would seem as if the attachment of any
 nicrophonic transmitter, such as tried by
 Professor Blake, to the hull of steel ship subjected to the vibrations of machinery and
 guns and to the attack of salt water would
 present difficulties, even after good results
 have been attained at anchor and in smooth
 water.